Unintended Consequences: Understanding the Relationship Between Dual Enrollment Participation, College Undermatch, and Bachelor’s Degree Attainment

Sanja Jagesic (), Maureen Ewing (), Jeffrey N. Wyatt () and Jing Feng ()
Additional contact information
Sanja Jagesic: College Board
Maureen Ewing: College Board
Jeffrey N. Wyatt: College Board
Jing Feng: College Board

Research in Higher Education, 2022, vol. 63, issue 1, No 5, 119-139

Abstract: Abstract Recent research suggests that dual enrollment programs are a useful recruiting tool for colleges and universities as many high school students remain at their dual enrollment institution after high school graduation. Students staying enrolled at their dual enrollment institution for college may be beneficial for institutions, but is it beneficial for participating dual enrollment students? We find that students who participate in dual enrollment in high school are more likely to experience college undermatch than similar students who do not participate in any postsecondary acceleration opportunities. Students who participate in a dual enrollment program at a 2-year institution and stay at the institution after high school graduation are up to 29% points more likely to undermatch than the average dual enrollment student enrolling in a different postsecondary institution after high school graduation. The difference is reduced to 9% points for dual enrollment students who stay at a four-year institution. Most significantly, our research shows that the decision to stay at a 2-year dual enrollment institution has negative consequences for bachelor’s degree attainment. Students who stay at a 2-year dual enrollment institution where they are undermatched have about a 33% point lower probability of completing a bachelor’s degree when compared to similar 2-year dual enrollment students who move to a 4-year institution where they are not undermatched after high school graduation.

Keywords: Dual enrollment; Dual credit; Concurrent enrollment; Accelerated programs; College undermatch; Graduation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-021-09643-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:reihed:v:63:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s11162-021-09643-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11162

DOI: 10.1007/s11162-021-09643-x

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Higher Education is currently edited by Robert K. Toutkoushian

More articles in Research in Higher Education from Springer, Association for Institutional Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().